An odd discovery

So I've been wrestling with my Davison bass, and keeping my Kahler fiver in tune on it. At first it seemed to work fine, but then it didn't. I knew that the backwards angle of the headstock would be an issue, and it has been. Drop the bar, and the strings go sharp.

Now, I have plans in the works to have two new basses custom built, and they will both have straight headstocks which will cure the sharp issue. In the mean time, how to deal with the bass I currently have.

Last night at practice, it occurred to me that the strings always go sharp exactly the same amount. My tuner confirmed that they usually go sharp by a few semi-tones, but always the same amount.

So then I thought, what if I were to tune the bass flat by the same amount as the strings go sharp, then hit the bar? So that's what I did....and guess what? The trem pulled the strings sharp exactly into tune! And there they stayed!

Yeah eric, I discovered this too. I dont know if it was a discovery as much as its always just been a common practice on all stringed instruments ... always tune from flat to sharp. I do it at the machine heads, it just made sense to do it at the trem too.

Guitar players do this constantly because the tolerances are tighter, loosten the string to get it in tune, then have to tune again the next song. The kahler guitar trems are the same and I think why they get a bad wrap and people prefer doohickeys like bridge fine tuners and lock plates aka floyd rose. Good trems, but if guitar players understood this, they may find that a simpler kahler design works just fine.

I discussed this on a guitar builder forum a minute back. The bass players and some of the guitar players knew this, some trem guitar players were like, "oooooooh" and thanked me, then there were some who wanted to argue about it .... oooookay. (I dont care how you tune your guitar.)

With the headstock angle. Ive had no problems @ 13 degrees with the proper nut. All my basses, ive replaced the nuts with custom colored corian material. I dont know if its the material, the mechanics of how I make the nut or the pencil I put on there in the slots at string change (your tip). Ive had several bassists try my trem basses out and they go nutz on the bar, then they chek the tuning and are surprised. After dive bomb to strings aldente, it never returns to perfectly in tune, but not anything noticeable or me having to habitually tuning for the next song, like my first two kahler basses.

I got to start working on another bass build. I got nothing going on right now.

That's OK, MadMike. This place usually ebbs and flows. I'm used to it by now.

Yeah, I don't know why it never occurred to me sooner about de-tuning the sharp strings, but I'm glad I finally figured it out. And I had no idea that guitarists had already been doing this. Go figure.

Of course, I'll soon have a couple of new basses that won't have the angle issues, so I'm almost late in coming up with this. But in the mean time, at least it's a solution.